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Marek Jan Chodakiewicz was born in Warsaw, Poland. He earned a B.A. degree from the San Francisco State University in 1988, a M.Phil. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. with distinction from Columbia University in 2001. His Ph.D. thesis was entitled: Accommodation and Resistance: A Polish County Kraśnik during the Second World War and its Aftermath, 1939-1947. Between 2001 and 2003 Chodakiewicz was an assistant professor at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville as the holder of the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies of the Miller Center of Public Affairs. In 2003, Chodakiewicz was appointed Research Professor of History and in 2004 Professor of History at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, DC, where he teaches and conducts research on East Central Europe and Russia.[3] His expert areas include History, Democracy Building, Communism, American Foreign Policy and International Relations. Since 2008, he has also held the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies at IWP. Chodakiewicz has also served as Adjunct Professor of International Relations at Patrick Henry College since 2008.[4]

In 2003 Chodakiewicz received the Józef Mackiewicz Literary Prize in Warsaw,[5] for his two-volume book of history entitled Ejszyszki.[6] According to Chodakiewicz his work refutes Yaffa Eliach's allegations of a 1944 post-liberation pogrom in Eišiškės against Jews by the Polish Home Army, in which Eliach said she survived beneath the body of her mother and baby brother who were shot multiple times after being discovered hiding in a closet, and as promoted in the American media and her book.[7][8][9][10][11] Per Chodakiewicz Jewish bystanders were killed accidentally during an "anti-Soviet assault by the underground", and not in a pogrom. However, per Chodakiewicz "unfortunately, and quite typically, unlike the charges, the refutation received no publicity in the American media".[12][13] Chodkiewicz's publication was reviewed positively in the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, whose editor Adam Michnik had previously called Eliach's account as an insult to Poland.[14][15]

In April 2005, Chodakiewicz was appointed by President George W. Bush for a 5-year term to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Controversy erupted towards the end of his term over Chodakiewicz's claims in several publications that Polish nationalists who murdered Jews after the Holocaust, in events such as the Kielce pogrom, were not motivated by Antisemitism.[1] Chodakiewicz's appointment was criticized by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which noted publications by Chodakiewicz in far-right Polish publications.[16] Historian Jan T. Gross said that "The guy is an ideologist of the radical right, I don't have any doubts that he's anti-Semitic."[16][1][17] While Polish-Canadian historian Piotr Wróbel said that "he would never use a phrase or adjective that would clearly identify him as an anti-Semite", but "There is no doubt whatsoever that he doesn't like the Jews.".[16] Chodakiewicz rejected the allegations as "baseless", and his term on the council ended in 2010.[1]

Chodakiewicz specializes in East Central European history of the 19th and 20th century including the history of Poland, Habsburg and Romanov Empires, Jewish-Polish relations, environmental politics, intellectual conservative tradition, and extremist movements including Communism and Fascism. His special area of interest is World War II and its aftermath.[citation needed]

Reviewing The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, and After on the Jedwabne pogrom, Peter Stachura in a very positive review described the book as meticulous and well researched.[18] In contrast, Joanna Michlic in her review writes that the book presents "intellectually and morally unacceptable interpretations", being part of a "ethno-nationalist historiography" trend that promotes "an image of Poland as only heroic, suffering, noble, and innocent".[19]Piotr Wróbel in his review, says that Chodakiewicz's aim, as stated in the introduction, is to show Jan T. Gross is wrong. Wróbel acknowledges that Chodakiewicz makes some good arguments, however they are "overshadowed by numerous flaws" and the book lacks any sense of proportion. According to Wróbel, the book has a "visible political agenda" and is "difficult to read, unoriginal, irritating, and unconvincing".[20]

Reviewing Intermarium: The Land between the Black and Baltic Seas, Karl A. Roider Jr. describes the main theme of the book as a struggle between the democratic Polish model and the Russian totalitarian model over the Intermarium which per Chodakiewicz's includes the Baltic States, Ukraine,
Belarus, and Moldova. While attempting to appeal to an American audience, the book demands the reader know quite a bit about Eastern European history. Much of the book focuses on the post-1989 Intermarium, describing a struggle between patriots and post-communist Russophiles. The Russophiles being described as "in cahoots with Western deconstructionists, feminists, environmentalists, gay rights advocates, nihilists, and postmodernists who are entrenched in American and Western European universities". According to Roider, "there are conspiracies everywhere in this book, but the author offers no names, no institutions, no objectives, and no strategies" other than undermining the Intermarium's return to the pre-1772 Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Chodakiewicz calls for an alliance between the Eastern European countries to contain Russia, however according to Roider such a call is likely to fall on deaf ears as the United State's attention is focused elsewhere.[21]

Danusha Goska and Piotr Wróbel have also written unfavourable reviews of two of Chodakiewicz's monographs for The Sarmatian Review in 2004 and 2006.[22][23] Chodakiewicz included an essay by John Radzilowski (assistant professor of history at the University of Alaska Southeast) in Golden Harvest or Hearts of Gold?, a 2012 collection of essays co-edited by Chodakiewicz, which characterized several prominent Polish-studies scholars as "neo-Stalinists".[24] The characterisation of these historians was strongly criticised by Goska in her review of the book for Polin.[25]

Chodakiewicz wrote a few books in response to works by Jan T. Gross. In 2017 his approach to the Holocaust was criticized by Joanna Michlic, a professor of Polish-Jewish history at Lehigh University, as an attempt to erase the "dark past" by showing only a "good past".[26]
Chodakiewicz has been criticized for his reluctance to accept Polish responsibility for the Kielce pogrom.[27] Critics particulaly take issue with Chodakiewicz's argument that Jewish-born communist partisans' and functionaries' killing of Poles during the Soviet occupation "contextualizes", if it does not justify, Polish violence against Jews. Laurence Weinbaum compares Chodakiewicz's writing to pseudo-scholarly screeds and says that Chodakiewicz believes the antisemitism scholars in Poland are advancing an anti-Western and anti-American agenda.[28]

In January 2018, Chodakiewicz warned that the 50 year anniversary of March 1968 events would be used by "Volga Stalinsts" to "launch another anti-Polish campaign of hatred". According to Chodakiewicz, contrary to the popular view in the English speaking world viewing events through the prism of Antisemitism, March 1968 was a protest of Polish students against communist rule. Chodakiewicz suggested to counter the Jewish campaign by publicizing Pope John Paul II's accomplishments, explaining that a free and independent Poland is indispensable for peace and Europe, and finally by explaining that March 1968 was an anti-communist student rebellion while the purges were done by the communist party and not by Poles. According to Chodakiewicz, communists can not be Polish as communism is transnational.[32][33][34]